Hotel Ransomed

Petty cybercrime has recently become an unusual plague to the tourism industry at the beginning of the winter season.

The Romantik Seehotel Jaegerwirt in Austria had made a hacking of their keycard system public, after they had been attacked for the third time by cybercriminals. I the recent case, the guests could no longer get access to their hotel rooms, as the key cards systems has been blocked. While the hotel was fully booked, the management decided to pay a ransom of around 1.500 Euros in Bitcoins to the criminals, as neither Police nor insurance were able to help them in the issue.

The restoration of the system after the first attack in summer last year had cost them already several thousand Euros without any decompensation from the insurance. The final result was a complete change of the IT infrastructure to prevent any further attacks. Petty crimes like this kind of hacking will stay mostly unprosecuted due to the "little" economical impact.

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Article at CNN